Rebecca Spang
- Associate Professor, Department of History
Education
- B.A. at Harvard University, 1984
- M.A. at Cornell University, 1988
- Ph.D. at Cornell University, 1993
Contact Information
| rlspang@indiana.edu |
| Ballantine Hall, Rm. 711 |
(812) 855-2437 |
| http://mypage.iu.edu/~rlspang/ |
Background
I am a historian of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe who has concentrated primarily on the interaction of culture, politics, and consumption. My first book, The Invention of the Restaurant, won two major prizes and has been translated into Japanese and Portuguese. Asking a deceptively naïve-seeming question—How did "eating out" become an enjoyable leisure activity?—the book used political pamphlets and medical treatises, travelers' descriptions and legal documents to explore restaurants as a new form of semi-private sociability (and semi-public sensitivity) in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Paris.
My research seems to cluster around basic nouns: having considered "food," I am now interested in "money." My current book project (working title: "Stuff and Money in the Time of the French Revolution") treats the economic and psychic life of symbols—especially that mass-produced symbol known as money. Economic theory and policy are relevant to this study, but I am more especially interested in how money is literally made and used.
Deeply committed to archival research, I nonetheless find it crucial to maintain an active interest in cultural and critical theory. The mutual illumination of 'theory' and 'practice' often informs my teaching, as well, at both undergraduate and graduate level.
I am a member of the History Workshop Journal Editorial Collective and of the Editorial Boards of Food, Culture, and Society and French Historical Studies.
Selected Awards
- Gottschalk Prize for best book in eighteenth-century studies, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (2001)
- Thomas J. Wilson Prize for best first book, Harvard University Press
- Michigan Society of Fellows, 1993-1996
- Derek Bok Prize for excellence in teaching (1992)
Research Interests
- Cultural history and social/economic theory
- Modern Europe
- France, 1715-present
Courses Recently Taught
- Modern France
- Cash: Currency and Culture in Historical Perspective
- Professional Study of History
- French Revolution and Napoleon
- History and Psychoanalysis
- Europe from Napoleon to the Present
Publication Highlights
Books
The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000.
Articles
"The Ghost of Law: Speculating on Money, Memory, and Mississippi in the French Constituent Assembly." Historical Reflections/Réflexions historiques special issue on "Money and the Enlightenment" 31:1 (winter 2005), 3-25.
"Paradigms and Paranoia: How Modern is the French Revolution?" (Review Essay), American Historical Review 108:1 (February 2003), 119-147.
"First Performances: Staging Memories of the February Revolution," in Axel Körner, ed., 1848: A European Revolution? London: Macmillan, 2000, 164-184.
"All the World's a Restaurant: On the Gastronomics of Tourism and Travel," in Raymond Grew, ed., Food in Global History. Boulder, Colorado: Westview, 1999, 79-91.